But this attempt also was
unsuccessful: Mr. Duncan, after a considerable lapse of time, reaching no
farther than Chesterfield Inlet.
The attention of scientific men, and of the public at large, was called
again to this important problem in the geography of the northern seas, by
some elaborate and well informed articles in the Quarterly Review, which
are generally supposed to be written by Mr. Barrow, the under secretary of
the Admiralty, who also published an abstract of voyages to the Northern
Ocean.
The British government, influenced by a very laudable love of science, and
perhaps regarding the discovery of a north-west passage as of the same
importance to commerce as the reviewer evidently did, resolved to send an
expedition for the purpose of attempting the discovery. Accordingly, on the
8th of April 1818, two ships, the Isabella and Alexander, well fitted by
their construction, as well as strengthened and prepared in every possible
manner for such a voyage, sailed from the Thames. Captain Ross had the
principal command. It is not our design here to follow them during their
voyage to their destination: suffice it to say, that on the 18th of August,
exactly four months after they sailed from the Thames, the ships passed
Cape Dudley Digges, the latitude of which they found to agree nearly with
that assigned to it by Baffin, thus affording another proof of the accuracy
of that old navigator, whose alleged discoveries have been latterly
attempted to be wrested from him, or rather been utterly denied.
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